Afutilestan XIII: The Year In Review

As Commander in Chief wanna be Sarah Palin might put it: How’s that surge thingy workin out for ya, Mr. President? Not so good, as The Wall Street Journal reports this week: Internal United Nations maps show a marked deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan during this year’s fighting season, countering the Obama administration’s optimistic assessments of military progress …

Afutilestan (IX) XI

On the ninth anniversary of 9/11 (the day that America became unhinged and ushered in a lucrative national security state), we remember the innocent victims and the heroes who lost their lives trying to save them and others. Seven thousand miles away, a hundred thousand American troops and another hundred thousand plus private contractors and NATO troops are supposedly fighting …

Christian Taliban To Burn Qu’rans

Christian Taliban leader Terry Jones burned in effigy in Afghanistan This Saturday on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, members of a small Muslim hating Christian group, ironically called Dove World Outreach Church, plan to burn a pile of Qu’rans to demonstrate their hatred of Islam. It’s not like we haven’t been down this road before. Five years ago reports of …

Open Cordoba House

Roman bridge leading to the Mezquita, or Mosque-Church, in Cordoba, Spain I got me a bone to pick with Sharif el-Gamal, the developer of the Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, originally called Cordoba House, on near the site of the former World Trade Center. While there are a variety of groups for and against its construction, the most frenzied …

Muslim Crow Laws

New web ad by the progressive Agenda Project slamming opponents of the Park 51 Islamic community center As Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. said: Hate begets hate. And I would add, develops its own momentum, escalating into the kind of violence cited briefly in the ad and detailed in this NY Times article titled Rider Asks if Cabby Is Muslim, Then …

Afutilestan IX (Update)

US taxpayers funding the killing of its own troops [Note: The arguments of my previous eight Afutilestan diaries explaining why the continuing and escalating presence of US troops in Afghanistan is doomed to fail are incorporated herein.] So what’s new since my last quagmire update? Last night the House approved another $30 billion in military spending in Afghanistan, on top …

Censorship And The High Price Of Satire

Last November, Jon Stewart told Bernie Goldberg to go fuck himself after Goldberg said that, unlike his hero Sarah Palin, liberals would never have five babies, let alone allow one with Downs Syndrome. (Rose Kennedy? Anyone?)  And then again on Tuesday, Stewart told Goldberg as well as his paymaster, The Lupus of News, to go fuck themselves, this time to …